1
Introduction A Psychological Disorders are conditions that affect your thinking, feelings, acting, or a conditions related to how you interact with your surroundings. These cases are very common. & Many people may have had one of them or may know someone who suffer from it . The symptoms of these disorders range from being mild to severe. They also vary from person to person. In many cases, it makes the person's daily life hard to handle. But when an expert give the right diagnosis to the case, this will help the patient to get treatment and get his life back on track.
Causes Up till now, Doctors couldn't reveal the exact reasons for most Psychological Disorders. But the causes or reasons could be a combination of a lot of things like your genes, biological factors, and also your life experiences seem to has a great effect on that. Many Psychological Disorders are found in many families. But this doesn’t mean that you will experience one of them if your father or your mother did. Some conditions involve interfering with your brain chemistry. It starts to interfere in the way you think, your mood, and your behavior. For example, you may have high level, or minor, activity of one of the brain chemicals which are called “Neurotransmitters” interfering this chemistry. Also, we find that brain injuries are linked to some of those Psychological Disorders. Some of the Psychological Disorders may be triggered or aggravated by trauma that happens to you ay your childhood or when you’re a teenager, like:
Severe abuse experiment which could be physical, emotional, or sexual experiment.
Major losses, such as the death of a beloved person like parent, especially in early in life
Ignorance & Neglect 2
The major sources of mental stress, such as (Death - Divorce - Family Problems - Job Loss - Abuse Experiments), can trigger some psychological disorders in certain people. However, not everyone who goes through life experiments like the mentioned things develops a psychological disorder. It’s normal to have some sadness, ire, fury, and other emotions when you have a major failure in your life. A psychological disorder is different from that.
Symptoms There are so many different psychological disorder, and their symptoms vary from one disorder to the other. But in general, the all have some common symptoms which include:
Thinking Problems
Being suspicious all the time, angry, confused, or sad
Some major mood swings
Relationships (in & out home) problems
Hallucinations (like seeing or hearing things that aren’t exist)
Drugs abuse (& alcohol)
Feeling that there's no hope and couldn't enjoy many things that they used to like
Thoughts (& attempts) of committing suicide - harming themselves (or other persons)
Sleeping problems (sleep too much or too little).
3
Types of Psychological Disorders There are too many different conditions and types of Psychological Disorders, but we will only mention some of the most common types which include: Anxiety Disorders: It's a mysterious, inconvenient feeling of terror, panic, or danger. Anxiety disorders can be involved in a lot of psychiatric conditions. The symptoms of it can vary from case to the other according to the severity and the length of the case. In accordance with the "Anxiety Disorders Association of America", the 5 anxiety disorders are: The Panic Disorder, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), and the Phobias (which includes Social Phobias). Mood Disorders: Also can be called "The Affective Disorders", which involves a persistent feelings of sorrow or periods of feeling too happy and hilarious, or changing from extreme mellowness to extreme melancholy. The most common type of the mood disorders is depression, which affects more than 9.4 million person in America. Also there are some other well-known types of the mood disorders such as Mania, Disruptive mood deregulation disorder, and Bipolar disorder.
Personality Disorders: People who suffer from this disorder have great inflexible, stubborn & uncompromising personality traits which are saddening to the person and/or cause a lot of problems for him in his work (or school or college) or in his social relationships. In addition to that, the person’s thinking and attitude significantly diverge from what is expected from the society. There are many examples for this disorder like: Antisocial personality (Where the person tends to break the laws, lying, being rushing and neglecting the results of his actions, getting in fights, ignoring self & others safety), Obsessive-Compulsive personality (The person suffer from obsessive thoughts like: violence, caring
4
too much about cleanliness, and fear of germs & infections), and Paranoid personality (Here we have a highly suspicious person who suspect everything). Eating Disorders: Examples for it: Bulimia, Anorexia, and Binge eating disorder. It includes the cases of extreme affections, and behavior toward weight and food. While the Eating Disorders might begin with preoccupations with eating, food & weight, they are -indeed- about much more than food. Eating disorders emerge from a variety of materialistic, sentimental, public, and homelike issues, all of the previously mentioned circumstances need to be identified for effective prevention and treatment process. Eating disorders are authentic, sophisticated, and withering conditions that can cause and have serious results for person's health, validity, productivity, and relationships. This type of disorders can lead to considerable physiological changes that will need medical -or surgical- treatment besides the psychiatric treatment. Impulse Control Disorders: Persons who suffer from impulse control disorders are in capable of resisting the motive, or the impulses, to execute acts that can be baleful to themselves or others. Pyromania (Set fire to a place), Kleptomania (to steal something that you don't need) and to gamble a lot are some of the common examples of the impulse control disorders. Psychotic Disorders: This type involves a disfigured awareness and thoughts. Hallucinations and Delusions are the most common symptoms of this case. Hallucinations is the seeing images or hearing sounds which are not real. Delusions is a pseudo beliefs which the patient convinced with it as a fact, in spite of proofs to the contrary. Schizophrenia is the most famous example of these psychotic disorder.
5
Treatment The treatment could give best results when it comes early. When you go to your doctor as soon as possible when one of the symptoms appear or just when you doubt something about your mental health, this really helps a lot & can lead to a complete cure of the case. The treatment programs depend on the condition of the patient. In many cases, people usually get one or more of these treatments: Medication: prescribing drugs helps a lot to manage the symptoms of many disorders like Depression, Insomnia, Anxiety, OCD, or Psychosis. Psychotherapy: This treatment requires a specialized counselor. It may be one-on-one program, just you and your counselor, or it may happen in a therapy sessions with a group of persons who have the same problem like you. Changing Lifestyle: In a lot of psychological disorders cases, changing your ordinary life and habits, or
changing
the
place
where
you
live,
makes
a
significant
difference.
For example, making exercises is one of the best and favorable treatments for persons who suffer from a mild depression. In some other cases, treatment may take a creative side, where the counselor include creative therapies (such as music therapy), meditation, and other brain stimulating therapies, like: Electro-convulsive therapy (ECT therapy): In this treatment, the patient is “asleep� under general anesthesia, while the doctors put electrodes on specific points of his head to stimulate specific areas on the brain. This treatment method is usually used for dealing with major depression especially in severe
6
cases. The sessions is repeated for several times a week or for a few weeks, and we usually use this treatment only in case of the failure of other treatments. Stimulating the Vagus nerve: Here, the doctors stimulates the vagus nerve by a device that will be implanted in your body. The vagus nerve is relaying messages to some areas inside the brain which are thought to has a significant effects on mood and thinking. This treatment is for severe depression cases that don’t respond to medication with two or more anti-depressant. Magnetic stimulation: Where magnets are used (from outside the body) for stimulating the brain. Also we make it when the patient doesn't respond to the normal treatments.
Conclusion With an early diagnosis and right treatment, a person with a psychological disorder can fully recover from his case or at least he will be able to manage his symptoms and lead a normal life. Although many people have become disabled due to having a chronic or severe psychological disorder, many others are now capable of leading a full and productive lives. The main key in managing the disorder and treating it is to get help from specialists and medical experts as soon as possible, just at the beginning of the symptoms and to carefully keep up with treatment program.
Recommendations The psychiatric patient mainly needs the support more than treatment. Family & friends support is the key that will activate the medical treatment. Also, spreading the psychological awareness among the society is an urge, it will help significantly in early diagnosis of the case and therefore start the treatment process early to help the person to lead a normal life again.
7
References F. Kernberg, Paulina. S. Weiner, Alan. & K. Bardenstein, Karen. (2000). Personality Disorders in Children and Adolescents. Basic Books. W. Livesley, John. (2003). Practical Management of Personality Disorder. Guilford Press. Strack, Stephen. (2006). Differentiating Normal and Abnormal Personality. Springer Publishing Company. W. Wright. (1998). Born That Way: Genes, Behavior, Personality. Rosowsky, Erlene. C. Abrams, Robert. & A. Zweig, Richard. (1999). Personality Disorders in Older Adults: Emerging Issues in Diagnosis and Treatment. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Bowins, Brad. (2010). Personality Disorders: A Dimensional Defense Mechanism Approach, American Journal of Psychotherapy, 64, No. 2. Rosemery, O. Lootens, Christopher, M. Mitchell, John, T. Robertson, Christopher, D. Hundt, Natalie, E. & Kimbrel, N. (2009). A Assessment and Treatment of Personality Disorders: A Behavioral Perspective, The Behavior Analyst Today, 10, No. 1. https://www.verywell.com https://www.psychologytoday.com
8